31 October, 2017

Trump
administration continues its mission to wipe out the US middle class
and the poor. After hiring some top banksters to run the economy,
returning to the path of full-mode deregulation of Wall Street,
preparing more tax-cuts for the super-rich that will deteriorate
further the already bad condition of the social state, it's time to
attack the poor who can't pay electricity.

Dr.
Richard Wolff explains:

Last
summer, 900,000 homes in Texas went dark because of unpaid bills.
That's triple the number ten years ago in the state of Texas. Number
two, California, 714,000 homes, the most on record for the state of
California. Across the US as a whole, millions of people are being
disconnected from electricity.

The
Trump administration released its 2018 budget. And in that budget
they got rid of the LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance
Program). It's a program of the federal government that helps poor
people, if they qualify, to pay at least part of their electricity
bills.

Last
year, 2.9 million households turned and got some help. So, why is it
being canceled by the Trump administration? According to Mick
Mulvaney, Director of the US Office of Management and Budget, he
cited the figure of eleven thousand people who didn't qualify, but
who got help. 2.9 million people disconnected and needed help. Eleven
thousand, which is 0.0001 percent of this cheated in some way,
weren't qualify, or even dead in some cases. To use a tiny fraction
of corruption to cancel out what millions of people need, there is no
justification for that.

So,
while on the one hand, the Trump administration puts inside the
government the most corrupted features of the parasitic capitalism
who almost ruined the economy in 2008 and have been saved with
billions of taxpayers money, it finds this cheap and ridiculous
excuse to cut help on nearly 3 million poor citizens.

Couldn't
sound more neoliberal. It comes straight from the neoliberal
narratives and propaganda by the mainstream apparatus. The fact that
a small fraction probably "cheated" to get some subsidy is
being used to paint as corrupted millions of poor who indeed need and
should take this additional help from the government budget.

The
'anti-establishment' Donald is doing everything in his power to
maintain neoliberal pro-establishment status inside the US. He is
just continuing the destructive neoliberal policies, just as has been
planned by the US plutocracy with either Hillary Clinton or him.

What
is left to see, is whether he will continue the war-for-profit policy
of the previous US presidents-faithful puppets of the establishment.
Indications so far leave little room for someone to believe that,
under Donald Trump, this policy will change.

Multiple
sources have told NK News that North Korea has been conducting
unprecedented mass evacuation and blackout drills in cities and towns
along the east coast of the country as tensions between North Korea
and the US continue to rise.

North
Korean citizens reportedly practiced leaving their homes and blacking
out their lights in case of a bombing campaign, the Telegraph
reported.

On
Saturday, during his visit with South Korea's Defense Minister Song
Young-moo in Seoul, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said, "North
Korea has accelerated the threat that it poses to its neighbors and
the world through its illegal and unnecessary missile and weapons
programs," and that US and South Korean military and
diplomatic cooperation has taken on "a new urgency,"
USA Today reported.

Mattis
also warned that the US does "not accept a nuclear North
Korea" and that "any use of nuclear weapons by the
North will be met with a massive military response, effective and
overwhelming."

These
evacuation drills and Mattis' declaration come in the wake of regular
offensive drills by the United States over the last several months,
which rehearse both conventional and nuclear attacks against sites in
North Korea and against its leadership.

Experts
are unsure whether the peculiar North Korean drills are indicative of
the country's fear of US retaliation or of wanting to create the
image of protecting its citizens.

Retired
South Korean General Chun In-bum said that these drills are unlike
anything he has ever experienced. "I have never heard of this
type of training exercises before in North Korea but [I] am not
surprised. They must realize how serious the situation is,"
Chun said.

Christopher
Green, author of the 2016 book "Continuity and Change in North
Korean Politics," told the Telegraph that he is divided on
"whether genuine security concerns are driving this, or the
wish to portray the image of a government that has concerns over
security."

Although
daily air raid drills also allegedly took place in 1994 when tensions
between Washington and Pyongyang increased over North Korea's nuclear
power development program, such drills are not common.

Trump
is uniting those opposed to him on both sides of the aisle into what
is essentially a single party that supports American exceptionalism
and its license to wage endless war around the world. Ironically,
this very precept is fervently embraced by Trump himself.

by
Whitney Webb

Part
1

Over
the course of the past year, something remarkable has happened to
George W. Bush. The former president, once detested by many Americans
for the numerous debacles that marked his presidency, seems to have
shed most of his infamy – becoming reborn, as one paper put it, as
the “internet’s favorite grandpa.”

Bush
has made several media appearances over the past year, first to
promote his paintings of wounded veterans, maimed in wars he began,
with appearances on programs like the Ellen DeGeneres show, the Today
show, and Jimmy Kimmel Tonight. Media coverage of these appearances
sought to immortalize the “funniest moments” from his media tour.
Publications, once critical of Bush, sang his praises for his
portraits of “astonishingly high” quality and his evolution into
“an evocative and surprisingly adept” artist. Peter Schjeldahl of
The New Yorker called the paintings an “exercise of Bush’s
never-doubted sincerity and humility,” despite his having
“obliviously made murderous errors” for which the former
president now “atones.”

The
media blitz was instrumental in changing long-standing attitudes
regarding the former president. Reagan Wright, a college student in
Arizona, explained to the New Statesman that, though her opinion of
Bush “was almost always negative” and she long considered him to
be “less than smart,” she now finds his antics “so cute” and
says her opinion of him totally changed upon watching his appearance
earlier this year on the Ellen DeGeneres show. A YouTube clip from
his “Ellen” appearance now boasts over 2.6 million views.

Then,
several months later, Bush again garnered significant amounts of
positive media coverage after he gave a speech last week critical of
President Donald Trump — though without naming Trump at any point.
The former president was widely praised for the “genius of his
words,” largely because he had joined mainstream political
discourse in criticizing the current president — not for his
warmongering or myriad conflicts of interests — but for his
“nationalism” and vulnerability to “conspiracy theories.”

Don
Sipple, a former political ad maker who worked with Bush, told the LA
Times that the speech came as a result of Trump’s behavior, which
“has stretched the bounds of decency to a point where Bush is
highly offended on part of the nation.” Bush the “compassionate
conservative” has now replaced Bush the war criminal.

The
media’s rehabilitation of Bush has had a dramatic effect,
particularly on the American left. A poll released last week
revealed that, while 85% of Democrats viewed Bush negatively in 2009,
51% of them — a majority — now view him positively.

30 October, 2017

Yanis Varoufakis sheds more
light on how and why the German leadership under Angela Merkel,
sabotaged investment deals by China in Greece that would benefit both
countries.

As the former Greek Minister of Finance describes briefly and
clearly:

In 2015 when I was conducting
negotiations with the Chinese side, in parallel to the negotiations
we were having with the European Union and the International Monetary
Fund, I was very pleasantly surprised by the way in which the Chinese
authorities managed to combine their sense of self-interest with a
patient investment attitude and a genuine commitment to renegotiate
and negotiate and discuss again and again with us, with a view to
achieving a mutually advantageous agreement.

The discussions began
regarding the Port of Piraeus, where COSCO, a state-owned Chinese
company, already had their foot in the door. And there was a
discussion about how to extent its operations. They were very
surprised when I proposed to them that this should be part of a
broader investment exercise in Greece by China, involving railways,
technology parks, involving all sorts of activities where our economy
needed patient capital, like shipbuilding and shipyards and tourism.

We came to a magnificent
agreement. They showed broad-mindedness, they were prepared to accept
collective bargaining agreements with trade unions. They were
prepared to take it step by step in a way that would, of course,
benefit them, but would also benefit us in a non-colonial manner.

What stopped it, was an
intervention by Berlin, insisting that no deal should go through
until and unless the eurozone had finished with the Greek government.

So, briefly, Germany sabotaged
Greece's approach with China for the following main reasons:

- Germany wouldn't risk to
lose its debt colony and the opportunity to grab Greek public
property on behalf of the German companies.

- It wouldn't let Greece to
breathe economically through Chinese investments because it would put
the Greek experiment in danger.

- It wouldn't let Greece to
co-operate with China as equal partners with mutual interests because
this would open the road to Chinese economic "invasion" in
other eurozone countries that would seek to escape from the German
cruel austerity and sado-monetarism, as well as the tight scrutiny by
the Brussels-Berlin axis.

- It wouldn't let Chinese
state capitalism to appear superior against the collapsing neoliberal
model being dictated by the bankers and the corporate lobbyists.

The
files were published as part of the nearly 3,000 documents collected
by the U.S. National Archive

The CIA considered bombing
Miami and other cities to create a terror threat while blaming the
government of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, according to
the recently-published "JFK files."

The files were published as
part of the nearly 3,000 documents collected by the U.S. National
Archive on the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy and
several other issues.

The report said the Central
Intelligence Agency, CIA, considered staging several terror events
involving Cuban citizens to seek blame for Castro's government.

“We could develop a
Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida
cities and even in Washington," the files read. The plan
also included a possible attack on migrants leaving Cuba to settle in
the United States.

"We could sink a
boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated). We could
foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even
to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized."

The release of 2,891
previously classified files also shed a light on more aggressive
tactics by the CIA, which included the placement of bombs and the
creation of a terror environment.

"Exploding a few
plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of a Cuban agent
and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban
involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an
irresponsible government,” the files went on.

The report also mentions how
the CIA tried to assassinate Castro through bodysuits filled with
deadly bacteria and explosive seashells planted underwater, taking
advantage of the Cuban leader's taste for diving.

"It was known that
Fidel Castro liked to skindive," the reports said. "The
CIA plan was to dust the inside of the suit with a fungus producing
madera foot, a disabling and chronic skin disease, and also
contaminating the suit with tuberculosis bacilli in the breathing
apparatus."

Finally, the files revealed
that after several allegations, investigations showed that the Cuban
government wouldn't have been responsible for killing Kennedy
"because such an act, if discovered, would have afforded the
United States the excuse to destroy Cuba. The risk would not have
been worth it.”

Catalonia's pro and
anti-independence parties are supported by almost the same amount of
people, a latest opinion poll has shown. If new regional
parliamentary elections were held now, it could see pro-unity parties
winning, but with an advantage of less than one percent.

Parties opposing Catalonia's
independence from Madrid attracted 43.4 percent support in the poll
conducted by Sigma Dos for the El Mundo newspaper. Those in favor of
the region's secession from Spain were supported by 42.5 percent.

One thousand respondents
"throughout the community" were interviewed for the poll
organized by the newspaper which generally opposes the independence
movement. It reported that the survey was held this week, between
23-26 October, a day before the parliament of Catalonia declared
independence.

It is “not unrealistic” to
grant dismissed Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont political asylum in
Belgium if he applies, Belgian Immigration Minister Theo Francken
said on Sunday, amid a simmering dispute over Catalonian
independence.

“It is not unrealistic if
you look at the situation,” Francken told Belgian broadcaster
VTM, as cited by Reuters. Belgium is one of the few European
countries where EU citizens can obtain political asylum.

28 October, 2017

Newly declassified documents
on JFK assassination shed more light on various issues, among them,
the multiple ways through which the US empire attempted to
assassinate former Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Once-secret government files
on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy revealed what many
had long suspected -- that Castro was in our country’s crosshairs.

In a file labeled “Top
Secret” but now available for the world to see, a memo lays out in
explicit details an American plot to kill the Communist leader.

As set forth in detail
elsewhere, the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in
assassination plots against Fidel Castro beginning as early as late
1959 or 1960, the declassified document said.

“These plans arose at
approximately the same time as preparations were underway for the Bay
of Pigs. The plans involved a number of bizarre schemes, and, in at
least one instance, involved some contact with organized crime
elements...”

While the plot, dubbed
Operation Mongoose, had been public knowledge, the means discussed to
carry it out had been secret for decades.

Among the methods considered
to whack the Cuban leader, who died in 2016, were poison, botulism
pills and the use of Cuban exile groups, according to the memo.

One top official called the
collusion with mob boss Sam Giancana “dirty business.”

The file
also reveals that there is evidence to indicate that the then head of
CIA, Allen Dulles, was aware and authorized plans for the
assassination of Fidel Castro. Recall
that Dulles “oversaw the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, Operation
Ajax (the overthrow of Iran's elected government), the Lockheed U-2
aircraft program and the Bay of Pigs Invasion.”

Yet, there is more evidence
that US empire's desire to see the Cuban leader dead, remained strong
even up until his final days.

An
impressive info from the cable, that appears to be coming from the former
service of the United States Interests Section in Havana, shows that
the opposition leader Martha Beatriz Roquewith had provided to the US
officials a document that was describing Fidel Castro's declining
health.

Other
interesting parts:

-
Media
have reported increased activity on the part of Fidel Castro this
past week: Speaking on the phone to Hugo Chavez during the
Venezuelan's visit to Haiti; and receiving Colombian author and
long-time sympathizer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Both Foreign Minister
Felipe Perez Roque (in Europe) and Parliamentary Speaker Ricardo
Alarcon stated publicly that Fidel Castro was making a comeback and
would return to the GOC's helm.

-
Dr.
Mercedes Bartules explains that at his (Castro's) age this illness is
not curable, and will not, in her opinion, allow him to return to
leading Cuba. He won't die immediately, but he will progressively
lose his faculties and become ever more debilitated until he dies.

-
This
report is consistent with our reporting that Fidel Castro probably
came close to death in July, 2006, and then again around October.
Since then, as we have seen in video and audio broadcasts, Castro has
been able to engage with Hugo Chavez and others for limited periods
of conversation and other forms of carefully controlled activity. He
has not appeared live on TV or in any other public context during the
entire period of his critical illness, which caused him to miss the
September, 2006 Non-Aligned summit and a large-scale celebration of
his birthday and armed forces day in December, 2006.

Another
impressive feature is that the US hawks were calling Castro
"dictator"(!!!), in their comments:

-
We
are missing too many variables to be able to predict accurately how
many more months Fidel Castro will live. Frankly, we don't believe
anyone, including Castro himself, can state that with certainty.
However, while he is still alive, even in a reduced capacity, his
presence has a chilling and retardant effect on Cuban society. The
high expectations for change are still out there, but are mostly
associated with the idea that the dictator has to die first before
anything substantial will happen.

So, it
is more than obvious that the US hawks couldn't wait to see Fidel
Castro dead, probably because during his latest years in power it
appears that he was ready to build strong alliances with Hugo Chavez
and others who, were exhibiting strong resistance against the US
imperialism.

Britain's capital city needs
to build 66,000 new homes every year to meet growing demand, London
Mayor Sadiq Khan said Friday.

The goal would mean new houses
being built in London at the rate of more than 180 every day.

In a statement from City Hall,
Khan urged the government to boost funding for housing in its budget
on Nov. 22, to give new powers to London and enable thousands of
affordable homes to be built.

The mayor has called for the
devolution of new powers to London over public land and allowing
local councils in the capital to borrow to invest in homes, saying
funding for affordable housing alone in London needs to rise to 3.6
billion U.S. dollars a year, more than five times the current
spending levels.

With the private sector alone
unable to build the thousands of new homes needed, Khan warned that
it served as a stark warning that London's housing crisis would
spiral even further out of control without action and a new program
of government investment.

A draft London housing plan,
due to be published next month, will include strong new measures and
set ambitious targets for every London borough to move towards a goal
that will double the current rate of home building, with a strategic
target for half of new homes to be genuinely affordable housing.

China's military should take
solid steps toward a strong army as socialism with Chinese
characteristics has entered a new era, said Xi Jinping, general
secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
(CPC).

Xi made the remarks when
meeting senior military officers in Beijing Thursday.

Xi, also Chinese president and
chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), urged the army to
remain true to its original aspiration and keep its mission firmly in
mind. He asked the army to learn and implement the spirit of the 19th
CPC National Congress, following the road of building a strong army
with Chinese characteristics and promoting the modernization of
national defense and the army.

"We should strive to
fully transform the people's armed forces into a world-class military
by the mid-21st century," Xi said.

Xi said that during the past
five years, the CMC has endeavored to build an army that follows the
command of the CPC, is capable of winning battles and has a fine
style of work.

It has been upholding the
Party's absolute leadership over the armed forces, innovating
military strategy, governing the army by law and promoting
civil-military integration.

Xi praised the 19th CPC
National Congress a success, saying that by the year 2020,
mechanization will be basically achieved, and the modernization of
the national defense and armed forces should be basically completed
by 2035.

The previous year, the U.S.
invasion of the Bay of Pigs, meant to topple the communist regime of
Fidel Castro, had been an embarrassing failure.

The administration of
President John F. Kennedy had turned instead to a Plan B to
destabilize Cuba and hopefully take down Castro: Operation Mongoose.

A National Security Council
memo released Thursday as part of the JFK assassination documents
details a meeting to discuss possible clandestine operations aimed at
sabotaging and destabilizing the Cuban regime.

Among those present at the
meeting, which took place on Sept. 6, 1962 — just six weeks before
the Cuban Missile Crisis – included National Security Advisor
McGeorge "Mac" Bundy; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy;
Air Force Gen. Edward Lansdale, who led clandestine operations
against Cuba; and Edward R. Murrow, the famous broadcast reporter who
was serving at the time as the director of the U.S. Information
Agency, and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Gen. Marshall
Carter.

Here are some of the possible
operations against Cuba. Some are only alluded to, others given a bit
more detail. It is not known which, if any, were actually put into
practice:

- An apparent plan to use
balloons to drop propaganda leaflets over Cuba: "After
considerable discussion, it was agreed that details should be
presented to the Group, to include the content of the leaflets which
would be dropped, and specifics as to the method and place of
launching, the technical details of the release of leaflets, etc.,
etc."

- Possible disruption of
Cuban radio and TV broadcasts: "Mr. Murrow explained the
far-reaching reactions that the Cubans could mount against U.S. radio
stations, and said that he felt on balance it would not be profitable
to provoke this kind of electronic warfare."

- The introduction of
biological agents, which would "appear to be of natural
origins" to produce crop failures. One of the members
present, Gen. Carter, "emphasized the extreme sensitivity of
any such operation and the disastrous results that would flow from
something going wrong, particularly if there was obvious attribution
to the U.S." Bundy said he wasn't worried "about any
such sabotage which could clearly be made to appear as the result of
local Cuban disaffection or of a natural disaster, but that the
[U.S.] must avoid external activities such as release of chemicals,
etc., unless they could be completely covered up."

- Infiltrating and
distributing "small explosives or incendiaries" to
(anti-Castro) Cubans. Gen. Carter notes a problem: "the
people have shown no inclination to use such materials despite many
exile claims to the contrary."

Immediately
following the Las Vegas shooting, the CFR is looking to capitalize,
not letting a good crisis go to waste. The CFR is conspiring to
influence the government domestically, calling for the ultimate
crackdown here in the United States.

Find
out how American citizens could land in the crosshairs as the full
destruction of the war on terror is set to come home, as the CFR
calls for new federal government powers bypassing local law
enforcement and the rule of law to take everything you have!

Plus
find out why the CFR is calling on the government to authorize
drone strikes on US soil.

27 October, 2017

Following a secret ballot, MPs in the Catalan parliament
declared independence from Spain, with the regional leader Carlos
Puigdemont saying the people had completed “a long-desired step.”
Lawmakers opposed to independence boycotted the vote.

The
assembly’s speaker announced that the motion was passed with 70 votes in
favor, 10 against, and two blank ballots, according to Reuters.
Earlier, MP’s from the three main national parties – the People's Party,
the Socialists and Ciudadanos – staged a walkout in protest at the
vote.

The declaration of independence led to a celebration among thousands
of cheering supporters in the streets of Barcelona, the region’s
capital. Before the secret ballot, the Catalonian regional parliament
also voted in favor of starting the “constituent process” to split from Madrid.

“In the days ahead we must keep to our values of pacifism and dignity. It's in our, in your hands to build the republic,"
Catalan President Carles Puigdemont told a crowd of hundreds of
supporters at Catalonia's parliament building following the vote.

He added that "today the parliament fulfilled the long-desired and fought-for step, and culminated the mandate of the ballot boxes," referencing the October 1 independence referendum.

Puigdemont's remarks prompted supporters to erupt into the Catalan anthem 'Els Segadors' (The Reapers) and chants of "Liberty!" Shortly
after the Catalan vote, the upper house of Spain's parliament approved
direct rule by Madrid.The Spanish government will now hold a special
cabinet meeting at 6pm local time on Friday, Spanish Prime Minister
Mariano Rajoy said.

A
bizarre case of assassination shook the world of investigative
journalism. The Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Galizia was
killed recently by a car bomb in Malta. Most of the mainstream media
connected the assassination with a fuel-smuggling network or money
laundering.

However,
the independent news media, Newsbud,
supports another theory, which relates the assassination with an
updated Operation Gladio by the US intelligence that is still active.

As
NewsBud reports:

The
story connects to Malta's role as one of the main hubs for offshore
banking and money laundering for Operation Gladio B. Also connects to
Malta's connection with Azerbaijan and its role in heroin trafficking
and weapons trafficking, supplying weapons to terrorist groups like
ISIS and Al-Qaeda under the CIA and NATO's Operation Gradio B. The
story also connects to the Panama Papers and much more.

Whistleblower
and investigative journalist, Sibel Edmonds, who is the one that
first shed light on the Operation Gladio B, reveals:

Beginning
in 2005-06, I began exposing not only Azerbaijan's role, but the
three main offshore banking centers for operation Gladio B: Cyprus,
Dubai and Malta. In some ways, the Panama Papers partially exposed
Malta's role as a banking center for money laundering. However,
Panama Papers doesn't even begin to touch the real role of Malta for
almost two decades as part of Operation Gladio B, operating as the
financial money laundering center along with Dubai and Cyprus.

I
see that the mainstream media report so far - from what we have seen
- focuses on Daphne Galizia's exposure of the local politicians,
including the PM of Malta, but this case goes way beyond corruption.
Daphne got too close to the heart of Operation Gladio B's operations.
And this is right after the exposure that we covered at Newsbud,
dealing with Azerbaijan's role and Silk Way, and this was something
that Operation Gladio B could not tolerate.

With
this, we have been seeing the most drastic measure that can be taken
against any investigative journalist, and this is a plain
assassination using car bomb to blow up a journalist that got just
too close to the heart of the Operation Gladio B. With this
assassination, what we are looking at, is a chilling message from the
Operation Gladio B to any investigative journalist, or investigative
blogger that dares to get too close to this operation and its
exposure.

It makes
sense someone to suspect that such a mafia-style assassination of an
investigative journalist is related to something quite deeper than
simple political corruption and money laundering, or even fuel
smuggling, which are things that have become almost ordinary cases in
our days.

According
to Edmonds, "Operation Gladio B" is an
FBI codename adopted in 1997 for ongoing relations between US
intelligence, the Pentagon, and Al Qaeda. The name refers to the
original Operation Gladio, in which US intelligence had established
groups (stay-behind forces) in Europe in preparation for a Soviet
invasion.

According
to Edmonds, Gladio B identified, among other things, regular meetings
between senior US intelligence and current leader of Al Qaeda Ayman
al-Zawahiri at the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan between 1997 and
2001, with al-Zawahiri and other mujahideen being transported by NATO
aircraft to Central Asia and the Balkans to participate in
Pentagon-backed destabilisation operations.

She
added that in 1997, NATO asked Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to
release from prison Islamist militants affiliated with Ayman
al-Zawahiri. They were flown by U.S. intelligence orders to Turkey
for training and use in operations by the Pentagon.

Additionally,
she reported that an Al-Qaeda leader had been training some of the
9-11 hijackers at a base in Turkey. These and related allegations
were seemingly confirmed by Sunday Times journalists in 2008 who
spoke to Pentagon and MI6 sources. However, according to Nafeez
Mosaddeq Ahmed, the journalists were prevented from publishing many
of these allegations when the second half of their four-part series
was dropped, possibly due to pressure from the U.S. State Department.

She
suggests that the objectives of Gladio B are "projecting U.S.
power in the former Soviet sphere of influence to access previously
untapped strategic energy and mineral reserves for U.S. and European
companies; pushing back Russian and Chinese power; and expanding the
scope of lucrative criminal activities, particularly illegal arms and
drugs trafficking." Former FBI special agent Dennis Saccher
states Edmonds's story "should have been front page news"
because it is "a scandal bigger than Watergate".

A
United Nations independent expert has warned that three recent rounds
of international sanctions on North Korea over its missile and
nuclear tests could affect the country’s ordinary citizens.

“I
am concerned with the possibility that these sanctions might have a
negative impact on vital economic sectors, and therefore, a direct
consequence on the enjoyment of human rights,” UN Special
Rapporteur Tomas Quintana said Thursday.

Quintana,
speaking to members of the UN General Assembly's human rights
committee, said bans on delivery of vital aid items to North Korea
have made it more difficult for human rights workers to help people
in need in North Korea, especially those affected by serious
illnesses and the disabled.

“History
shows us that sanctions can have a devastating impact on the civilian
population,” he said, adding that human rights staff
in North Korea have also had problems carrying out financial
transactions due to banking sanctions imposed on the country.

The UN
imposed its toughest-ever sanctions on North Korea after the
government in Pyongyang test-fired new ballistic missiles in July and
then conducted its most powerful nuclear test in September.

The
Security Council has slapped export bans on coal, iron, lead,
textiles and seafood, restricted joint ventures and blacklisted a
number of North Korean companies.

Quintana
said a full assessment of the sanctions regime should be carried out
so that the UN could guarantee that the measures do not "effectively
constitute a collective punishment on the ordinary citizens.”

The
US-led coalition has acknowledged that another 51 civilians were
killed during its airstrikes against purported positions of the Daesh
Takfiri terrorist group across Iraq and Syria, bringing the total
toll from the raids to at least 786.

The
coalition said in a statement on Thursday that during September, it
assessed 127 reports and that the 51 additional deaths occurred in 16
incidents going back as far as February.

Independent
monitors have time and again challenged such reports and revealed
that the US-led military campaign has significantly inflicted more
civilian casualties. According to the Airwars, a UK-based non-profit
monitoring group, at least 5,637 civilians have been killed by
coalition strikes.

The
co-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has recently said that
a total of 42,234 documented airstrikes in the country resulted in a
minimum estimate of some 7,000 civilian deaths by the US-led
coalition between 2014 and 2017.

The
US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said
to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any
authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate. Such air
raids began in Iraq in August of the same year.

The
airstrikes, however, have on many occasions resulted in civilian
casualties and failed to fulfill their declared aim of countering
terrorism.

Russia
said recently that the US wiped the Syrian city of Raqqah "off
the face of the earth" with carpet bombing in the same way the
United States and Britain bombed Germany's Dresden in 1945.

In a
statement released on October 22, the Russian Defense Ministry
accused the West of having rushed to provide aid to Raqqah to cover
up evidence of its own crimes.

Australia’s
public broadcasting network gave Hillary Clinton an open mike to
defame WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange as “a tool of Russian
intelligence” without giving him a chance to respond.

by
John Pilger

Part
5 - ‘Putin’s Bitch’

Following
the ABC broadcast, Ferguson’s executive producer, Sally Neighbour,
re-tweeted the following: “Assange is Putin’s bitch. We all
know it!”

The
slander, since deleted, was even used as a link to the ABC interview
captioned ‘Assange is Putins (sic) b****. We all know it!’

In the
years I have known Julian Assange, I have watched a vituperative
personal campaign try to stop him and WikiLeaks. It has been a
frontal assault on whistleblowing, on free speech and free
journalism, all of which are now under sustained attack from
governments and corporate Internet controllers.

The
first serious attacks on Assange came from the Guardian, which, like
a spurned lover, turned on its besieged former source, having hugely
profited from WikiLeaks’ disclosures. With not a penny going to
Assange or WikiLeaks, a Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood
movie deal. Assange was portrayed as “callous” and a “damaged
personality.”

It was
as if a rampant jealousy could not accept that his remarkable
achievements stood in marked contrast to that of his detractors in
the “mainstream” media. It is like watching the guardians of the
status quo, regardless of age, struggling to silence real dissent and
prevent the emergence of the new and hopeful.

Today,
Assange remains a political refugee from the war-making dark state of
which Donald Trump is a caricature and Hillary Clinton the
embodiment. His resilience and courage are astonishing. Unlike him,
his tormentors are cowards.

26 October, 2017

The
following video shocked the FOX pundits, simply because they didn't
expect that the American students of one of the top Universities in
the country would know so well what's really going on with the US
foreign policy, despite the common propaganda by the corporate media.

The
students supported that the US is a bigger threat to world peace than
ISIS, responding to the related question. Moreover, they seem to know
pretty well what's going on with the US dirty wars and interventions
that destabilize entire regions and become the real threat for peace
and stability.

Some
answers leave no doubt:

- I
think American imperialism and the protection of oil interests in the
Middle East are destabilizing the region and allowing groups like
ISIS to gain power.

- As
Western civilization we're to blame for a lot of problems that we're
facing now. I don't think anyone would argue that we didn't create
the problem of ISIS ourselves.

- The
amount of spending that America has on causes of potential
destruction in the world is really outlandish.

For a
start, this is just another indication that the corporate pro-war
propaganda doesn't actually work anymore on the US audience.

As
described previously,
thanks to continuous leaked information through WikiLeaks, various
Whistleblowers and other insiders, the myths staged by the US empire
collapse right at their beginning. As the Americans are turning their
back to the mainstream media propaganda, once a key tool of the US
war machine, the neocons will find almost impossible to push for
another bloody war, even if it would have been conducted through
proxies on behalf of the US.

But
students' responses show something much more fundamental. They show
that an anti-war movement, similar to that during the Vietnam war, is
booming underground throughout the American youth. After so much
death and destruction, spread by the US empire in the Middle East and
elsewhere, based on big lies, this movement is probably ready to
explode just with the smell of another US dirty intervention.

And it
also explains why the American youth has overwhelmingly supported a
true progressive from the anti-war generation of the Vietnam war era:
Bernie Sanders.

The next
big step would be a new independent political formation that would be
crucial for the final demolition of the US bipartisan dictatorship.
Which means that Bernie Sanders should abandon immediately the -
totally owned by the corporate establishment - Democratic party.
Latest
developments show that the DNC elite continues to
sabotage Bernie progressives because it doesn't want, by no means, to
see them take over the Democratic party. The elite wants to keep
status quo in order to stay in bed with the corporate lobbyists, keep
taking their money, even if it has to pay with one more defeat from
someone like Donald Trump.

So, the
next big question is for Bernie. What is he waiting for? It is
obvious that there is no hope with this corrupted party. With all
this movement behind him, he can make the next big step towards a
real political revolution.